Silver Barcode
by Transgenic-girl
Summary: Only elite psyops soldiers are assigned silver barcodes, meet just one...a girl named Charlie. She meets an X5 who is rumored to have died. But who?
1. White's Compound

**_This is sort of a spin-off story. You need to read my story Breeding Program: Successful to understand it fully. But I guess it'd work by itself too._**

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I woke up in a dark room, locked in a dark cage, I felt like I had gotten kicked in the stomach by a steel-toed boot. Which made sense I guess as I remembered that I had gotten kicked in the gut by a familiar.

I ran my fingers of one hand gently over my bruised face. My eye was especially tender and I could feel the blood scabbing over on my split lip.

I was just about to wonder where Mace was when I heard a groan off to my right. I looked and saw him holding his head in pain. I remembered watching ten agents bombarding him with tazers and firing beanbag guns at him. As soon as his knees had hit the ground they had rushed him and started whaling on him with batons.

"You okay big brother?" I asked, biting my lip. Unfortunately biting my lip opened it up again.

"I'm fine." Mace replied, and then he groaned again making a lie of his last statement.

"Yeah, sure." I said with a shake of my head, my voice rich with sarcasm.

I heard a guard planning on entering the room. Well, maybe not so much as heard but sensed. Manticore had given me a more powerful right brain, which lets me be able to have limited psychic abilities. I can't move objects with my mind or anything, I can just influence people better.

When the guard (finally) walked in, I was surprised. He was so young! He must've been only about my age and I'm just eighteen. I smiled at him and sent him an impression of fragility and sweetness. See, I can't send thoughts but I can change how people perceive things. Usually I don't bother because it takes huge amounts of energy, but I was willing to make an exception in this case.

The boy, that's what he was, a boy, stepped towards me. He stopped a few inches away from me and smiled shyly. I smiled back and reached through the bars to slide my hands up his arms. I forced myself to widen my smiled and I grabbed ahold of his uniform at his shoulders.

He started to lean in towards me, presumably to kiss me, but I stepped back. Confusion clouded his eyes. I smiled sweetly, and then pulled him into the bars of my cage. His head hit the metal with a sickening thud and he went slack in my grip.

I held onto him with one hand, grabbed his keys with the other. Once I had a hold of the key ring I lowered him gently to the floor. Mace scoffed at the care with which I handled the guard.

"You're such a soft touch." Mace said with a shake of his head. I rolled my eyes and let first myself, then him out of the cages. "That's why Manticore assigned you transgenic detection and non-pain-based interrogation. Too afraid to hurt someone."

"I'm glad." I said simply. "Otherwise I'd be stuck in some crummy facility scrambling the minds of my fellow soldiers." I flashed him a wide smile. "Plus, you'd be off to destabilize some foreign country's government or something instead of watching over me. Now wouldn't that suck?"

"You know, I only put up with you because we share the same DNA, right?" Mace told me childishly as he looked through the viewing window in the door.

"There's no one out there I hope you know." I said quietly as I scoped out the room. When I saw no one in the other cages, I let my mind search through the surrounding rooms.

Mace glared at me. He never likes it when I show him up. "Got a clear way out?"

"There are other prisoners Mace." I told him when I felt other minds all around.

"Little sister, I love you but this is not the time for your little heroics." He told me. Ugh! I hate when he gets stuffy and condescending.

"If we don't save them we're as good as helping White win his war against our kind." I reply, putting my hands on my hips. I start readying myself for a fight, knowing how stubborn he can be. It's a family trait.

"Fine."

I nearly fell over in shock. "Fine! But you never give in this easily!"

Mace rolled his eyes. "We don't have time to argue, and I know how stubborn you can be."

"Okay, you're finally getting it." I flashed him a huge grin. I walked out the door. And although I kept my mind open, I didn't bother looking around. I can only imagine how it'd look to someone who didn't know me. A teenage girl strolling through a 'secure' government building as if without a care must've been a strange sight. At least it would've if anyone had seen me.

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**_What do you think? This is my first first-person POV story_**

**_Reviews Equal Love_**

**_And Love makes the world go 'round_**


	2. The Boy With the Silver Barcode

**_Thanks to honeyx5-452 and shygirl1 for reviewing my first chapter. I really love this story and this character. AN: I figure since she spent do much time on the outside of Manticore that she talks more like an ordinary._**

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"What about cameras?" Mace hissed as he followed me out.

"Do you really think White would want to run the risk of tapes of him punching through solid steel doors?" I asked as I reached the door to the room I was looking for. I groaned when I saw the electronic lock.

Mace nudged me out of the way. After a few seconds I heard a beep and the door opened. He shot me a gloating look.

I rolled my eyes and entered the room. Inside I found a dozen or so cages, each with a transgenic inside. Almost all of the transgenics inside were around my age, save one. In the last cage, huddled in a corner, was a little boy with a silver barcode. He was only around two years old.

I handed the keys to Mace, trusting that he'd get the others free. I ran the fingers of my right hand over my own silver barcode as I kneeled in front of the cage. The silver colored barcode is the mark of a psy-ops soldier, which is why it was weird that a child would have it. I was one of the last psy-ops soldiers designed, one of an elite group called the TruthSayers, each psychic paired with a genetically similar X5 'bodyguard' unit.

I could hear the locks clicking as Mace hurriedly unlocked each cage. I leaned in towards the cage in front of me. "Hey." I half-whispered to him. "What's your name?"

He slowly turned and looked at me. "My designation is PX5-1133." He said so softly that **I** could barely hear him. He wiped back the tears that were streaming down his face with one grubby hand. His jet-black hair was sticking up messily and his emerald green eyes were filled with tears, as if he were trying to hold them back. "What's yours?"

"My name is Charlie. But my designation is P-622." I saw what looked like recognition spark in his eyes. But before I could ask him about it Mace was handing me the keys and urging me to hurry. I shakily unlocked the padlock, strangely nervous, and then opened the door. The boy toddled into my arms as I held them out to him.

I stood quickly, conscious of the gazes of the others; they must've seen my barcode when I stroked it in recognition. Regular X5s tend to get nervous around my kind, they've seen too many of the 'brain-washer' squads as they call them. I looked around at them all and felt determination stiffen my spine. I had to get them out of here, and prove that not all psy-ops soldiers are evil or cruel.

After sensing that there were no guards in the vicinity, I led them all out and down the maze of hallways. I saw out of the corner of my eye that one of the Xs opened his mouth to protest, but Mace shut him up with a glare. I tried not to laugh, Mace looked scary and would kill any who threatened me, but he really was a big teddy bear at heart. Just don't try to tell him that.

Only once did I feel a guard heading in our direction, and I expended some more of my rapidly depleting energy and sent him off in another direction. Because it was just a random patrol he didn't resist and thankfully I didn't have to use too much energy.

After about ten minutes of navigating our way through the labyrinth of the sub-ground complex, I was feeling more and more drained. I wasn't used to being on constant guard for a group so large. Mace eased the sleeping toddler out of my arms and I sent him a grateful smile.

Genetically empowered or not, this much stress was wearing me down. That was the exact reason Manticore assigned all TruthSayers an X5 to protect them. I can hold my own as any transgenic can, but huge amounts of psychic stress led to fatigue and eventual shutdown. So our bodyguard units are there to protect us when we're wearing down. The genetic link between bodyguard and psychic is because of the limited psychic link brothers and sisters share, and Manticore wanted to exploit that.

We were almost out when the alarm began to blare, a piercing wail echoed throughout the sub-basement. The best I can figure is that one of the guards must've checked in on White's prisoners and found out that we had escaped. If I had still been in top shape I would've been able to monitor who approached our cells and sway them from worrying about it. But as I said, all the stress had taken its toll.

Mace yelled quick instructions to the others on how to get out and they took off running down the hallway. I leaned against a nearby wall, almost entirely exhausted. The baby had woken up when the alarm had gone off, and was wiggling in Mace's arms, trying to get down. Then he began tugging on the ripped sleeve of my t-shirt and pointing at a door across from us. The door was painted black and had a silver sign on it saying "Morgue."

I shot him a look. Why did he want me to go in there? I felt a bunch of guards running towards us like a physical blow. I half-stumbled through the morgue door and pulled Mace in behind me by his sleeve. A minute later we heard the pounding of booted feet running by.

The little boy wiggled out of Mace's grasp and blurred across the room. I ran after him, feeling better now that the guards were getting farther away. When I finally caught up with him, man is he fast, he was standing next to the body of a guy around my age. He looked down at the body and then he looked up at me.

I looked down at the body's face, complete with bruises and dried blood and felt a shock like electricity run through me. I could barely feel it but I knew that the boy wasn't dead. I dropped to my knees and stared down at him, unsure what to do.

I touched his shoulder, just trying to get some response, and he opened his eyes. I think I gasped, I went completely still as his bright blue eyes stared into me. I looked at him for a second more then yelled over my shoulder for Mace to come over. When I looked back down at the bruised and battered face, but he had passed out again. I understood it however because of the amount of blood that was caked on his t-shirt.

Mace bent down and scooped the guy up, obviously conscious the guy's numerous injuries. I loved how he wasn't questioning me for once. I guess he figured that he might as well agree with me, so that we all could get out in one piece. I scooped up the little boy and we headed out the door. We blurred the last few hundred feet and out the complex doors before the guards even got wind of where we were.

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**_And I'm leaving for boot camp in a few months, I need all the love I can get_**


	3. The Motel

**_sorry for the long delay...hope you like this chapter. Don't forget to read my other DA fic that surrounds this one. It's called Breeding Program: Successful_**

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I sat on the bed, cleaning the blood of the unconscious 551, I knew what his designation was when I saw his barcode when I was checking to see if his neck had been broken. He was stripped down to his boxers, and was lying on top of the worn cotten sheets.

I was amazed at how bruised and battered he was, and was still somehow alive. If I hadn't felt his pulse and seen his chest rise and fall fractionally, I would've easily have thought him just a lifeless body. It must be why White had no idea he was alive, and had left him in that cold morgue. Bruises and lacerations covered him nearly from head to toe. I could even make out individual boot prints standing out in stark black and purple against his tanned skin.

I looked over my should and checked to make sure the little boy on the other bed was still asleep. Then, assured that he was sleeping soundly, I returned to my duties of cleaning up 511.

We were in a room in a cheap motel nearly fifty miles away from White's compound. The last two days we'd spent running as far and as fast away as we could with a three-year-old and an unconscious beaten man. Finding a car to hotwire on the side of a deserted highway seemed like manna from heaven, it was almost too good to be true. Of course we ditched it and torched it halfway to the motel, wanting to make sure we couldn't be traced to it.

Mace had put 511 down on one bed as soon as we walked into the room, rented with 'borrowed' money. I had sat PX-1133 on the other, and he had fallen instantly to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Then Mace went off to his room, saying…

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flashback

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Mace wiped off his hands after he sat the raven-haired man down on one of the beds. "Okay, I'm off to my room."

I stared at him as I pulled the blankets up to cover the toddler asleep on the other bed. "You mean you're not going to help me?"

He headed for the door. He looked over his shoulder just before he walked out. "Hey you're the one who collected all these strays. You deal with itm I'm gonna catch some sleep." Then he walked out.

I stuck my tongue out at the now closed door. "Jackass."

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end flashback

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I had finally goten all traces of blood of of 511 when I heard PX5-1133 start to wake up. He had slept for the entire time we'd been at this motel. I guessed that while captured he didn't sleep, probably to frightened to let his guard down, and was trying to catch up for at least a week of sleep deprivation.

I sat down my blood soaked washcloth down in the bowl of water on the floor beside the bed, and rushed to the other bed. I sat down carefully on the edge, trying not to startle him.

He sleepily opened his eyes, then he smiled when he recognized me. "Mama." He said, much to my shock.

"Mama?" I repeated, stuned. "W…why would you call me that?" I guess it wasn't the best response I could have given him, but when you're eighteen and a three year-old you just met calls you his mother, you tend to freak out. Not even Manticore had prepared me for such an encounter.

He stared at me like I was the one who was talking crazy. "That's what you are, my mama." At my blank, vacant, empty look, he continued. "PX5-1133. An exp…experimental cross between…" He paused, trying to remember a speech he had obviously heard many times before. "B…between P-622 and X5-511."

I swear I think my heart stopped. My gaze snapped between the boy and the unconscious 511. Besides the emerald eyes, my emerald eyes, I realiezed that he was the spitting image of the raven-haired X5.

I felt dizzy and light-headed, my world was like a magic eightball, tossed recklessly into a moving drier, nothing made sense. My face must've gone pale because the toddler seemed to panic. "Mama!"

I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "Y…yes baby?" Was all I could say, I am just used to interacting back and forth with anyone other than Mace. Sometimes I wish I had the ability to talk to people like the charm-enhanced X5s. Psy-ops interrogators weren't expected to talk, but to get someone else to talk. They weren't designed to be 'people' people. "I'm fine, don't worry."

He seemed to relax when I said that. "Mama…" He crawled into my lap and looked up at me. Funny how that felt so right, so normal. "Your name is Charlie, right?" I nodded. "C…can I have a name too?" He asked shyly.

My racing mind stopped at that simple question. They say we psy-ops soldiers have no heard, but I could feel myself melt. "Of course." I sat there for a minute, looking down at the young boy. "I've got it."

His entire face lit up in a huge grin, one I'm familiar with for it is my own. He bounced up and down excitably. "What? What is my name?"

"What do you think of the name Lucas?" I asked him, unsure of his reaction.

"Lucas!" The little boy shouted with glee, yes actual glee. I'm guessing Manticore never got around to training him with all the transgenic uprisings and escapes lately. So he was really just a little boy. "Can we call me Luke? I heard one of the guards talk about someone named Lucas that they all called Luke!" He was nearly bouncing with happiness. "My name is Luke," he said, as if trying it out. "My mama is Charlie and my daddy is X5-511!"

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**_I am just in love with Luke, but what do you think?_**

**_Please review, it takes less than 30 seconds!_**


	4. 511 Wakes

**_Itis mostly due to dragon89 that I'm updating this story, and quite possibly to kjghjh also (the statement 'No Update' was rather confusing). Thanks to you. I'm happy if only one or two other people read each of my stories because I write what I want to read but just cannot find._**

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Little Luke didn't sleep very much. I guess he inherited my shark DNA. He of course slept more than me, as all children do more than their parents, but still the longest he slept was only around six hours. Every night, from midnight to six in the morning, like clockwork.

I spent the two days in that hotel between Luke's waking up and 511's in an odd sort of routine. I checked on 511's wounds, and watched him sleep. Then when Luke would wake we would head to Mace's room to wake him up for breakfast.

Of course I'd let Luke wake Mace up by launching himself at my brother and being caught mid-air just before he could land on Mace's broad chest. Luke would always giggle and Mace would let out an uncharacteristic laugh until he remembered that I was there. Then he'd set down the little boy and grab me to tickle me.

I guess the fact that Mace and I were always out on 'assignment' explained why he didn't act like 'compound transgenics.' We only acted like the transgenics who'd had their childhoods beaten out of them, when we were hauled in once a year to give progress reports to the Director. I guess the lightened security when we were on the road gave us more autonomy and let us be ourselves more often.

After we'd have breakfast, whatever Mace had gotten for us the night before and we'd just relax for a few moments. Every second we could relax was worth its weight in gold, always has been. Then we'd clean up, I take Luke back to our room to give him a bath, leaving Mace to grab a shower of his own.

Then, when Luke was squeaky clean, he'd run back off to Mace's room next door so I could get a shower myself. The rest of the day I'd spend time between the two rooms, taking care of and watching Luke and then taking care of and watching 511. Needless to say, between a three-year-old and an unconscious man, I wasn't getting any sleep.

The third day we were in that dinky little hotel, I fell asleep. Days of no sleep and no appetite had exhausted me to the point that I passed out while sitting in a chair right next to 511's bed. One moment I was watching him sleep and the next...

I woke with my head on the rock-hard stomach of 511. I opened my eyes to find myself staring into the eerily familiar pair of bright blue eyes. I smiled at him before I was completely awake. Then, when I realized where I was and what I was doing, I bolted up, blushing like mad. He just stared at me, making me nervous.

"Morning sleepy head." I said with a smile, unable to resist.

He started to sit up. "How long have I been out?" He asked me. He seemed to be having a little trouble getting into a regular sitting position, so I helped him up.

"Three days 511." He was so surprised that I blushed again. Once again I curse my lack of X5 verbal smoothness. "I read your barcode, sorry."

"I'm surprised you're not running and screaming." And with those odd words, he searched my face for a response. And I realized that he thought I was an ordinary!

I smiled at the idea, in actuality it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. "Because you're a transgenic?" I asked slowly. When he nodded I began to laugh; I just couldn't help it. He flinched and looked confused. "511, so you're just pretty on the outside but nothing inside your empty little head but fluff?" I asked him, stifling my laughter. He continued to stare at me blankly. "I'm a transgenic too, dummy."

His face turned bright red. "Oh." He replied, grinning sheepishly at me. "My name's Biggs by the way. What's yours?"

"Charlie." I smiled again. "My name is Charlie."

It was a little while later, after I'd given 511 a bowl of the instant oatmeal Mace had lifted from a nearby store, that we got to talk more. It seemed perfectly peaceful and friendly, I never would've figured that we'd get onto such a dark and painful subject.

"What base were you at?" He asked me between spoonfuls of the warm mush. His arm was so injured I had to feed him myself, but I didn't really mind tending to such a gorgeous male. He kept his eyes on mine the entire time, strangely enough.

"I wasn't on any base." I told him as I gave him another spoonful. He swallowed the oatmeal obediently, then looked at me expectantly. I pushed back a strand of hair that was threatening to stick to my bottom lip, his eyes followed my movement. "I was on a special detail." I looked away nervously, not wanting to look him in the eye. Then I smoothed out the edge of the faded blue blanket he was under, wanting to get off the subject.

He reached over to me and placed his fingers under my chin. I looked up at him. "Charlie." He said quietly, soothingly. "What's wrong?"

"I..." I choked as my eyes filled with tears. I was so afraid of how he'd react to my next statement. "My designation is P-622." I whispered. "I'm...psy-ops."

He just sat there, obviously shocked into silence. I watched him fearfully, silently begging him to say something, anything. When he didn't murmur a single word, I dropped the bowl and spoon I was holding onto the table and fled the room as ifa pack of rapidwolverines were after me. And I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks at the latest in a long line of rejections from any social interaction with X5s.

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**_As always, please review. You've gotten this far, why not take it five seconds further?_**

**_-transgenic-girl_**


	5. Possible Death of the Story

**_Author's Note, yes another one, I apologize._**

**_I'm really stuck on this story. I'm gonna need some help._**

**_I don't need corrections or anything like that, just someone to brainstorm with._**

**_So more like a groan co-writer._**

**_I have yahoo messenger, myspace and a hotmail account. I check my hotmail several times a day looking for new chapters, so I'm very accessible._**

**_Please help, otherwise I'm afraid that this story is going to go extinct._**

**_Transgenic-girl_**


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